And There There Were None by Agatha Christie (1939)

'Ten little soldier boys went out to dine;
 One choked his little self and then there were Nine...

One little soldier boy left all alone;
He went and hanged himself and then there were None.'

An old nursery rhyme forms the backdrop to Christie’s murder mystery, And Then There Were None.
Ten strangers, each with a secret in their past, receive invitations of various sorts to an isolated mansion on Soldier Island. Arrangements had been made by a person going by the name of ‘U. N. Owen,’ the new owner of the island, for the individuals to be picked up at a certain point and then transported via boat to the island.
The guests realise too late that there is no way off the island until the boat returns, if in fact it ever will, and one by one the invited guests are killed in mysterious ways. Those remaining try to figure out who the killer might be and they each view the others as their enemies.

Agatha Christie has been a mixed bag for me. I’ve loved some of her novels: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Man in the Brown Suit, and The Secret Adversary were great reads but although the plot in the book I’ve just finished was clever and interesting, the characters were just awful. There was only one of the ‘Ten’ that I thought had any redeeming qualities; the others were plain old nasty and selfish. It was difficult to feel any sympathy for the cast of characters in this book. Give me Dorothy Sayers, Josephine Tey or even Margery Allingham instead of Agatha Christie anytime...well, at least until I read another of her books that changes my mind again.






This book is on my list for the 'Official 2018 TBR Pile Challenge' and it's my choice of a Crime Classic for Back to the Classics 2018